The Beauty Is
by The Carnivorous Muffin
Summary: Kyoko does not quite know what she is getting into when she marries Kyoya Otori but she must live with her actions all the same.


Kyoko had not truly known much about her husband Kyoya Otori until she had already married him. It had been an action of business on the part of her parents, a good match they had said, he had met her in person a few times with cold eyes behind glasses and a beautiful face that seemed to be carved from stone for all the emotion it conveyed and he told her at the end that he would find a marriage with her to be satisfactory.

His resume as a husband was near overwhelming, attractive, charming when it suited him, rich, ambitious, poised, a member of the aristocracy, a man venturing out on his own away from his father's own corporation it seemed as if Kyoya had everything. That was just it though, beyond that resume, it was hard to see if there was anything inside him except the turning of gears in his head forever calculating this or that.

He was more than that though, she'd find that later after the ceremony and the honeymoon, but she'd only get glimpses as those faces made of emotion; those slight strained smiles were not for her.

The first time Kyoko saw Haruhi Fujioka was at her wedding, she hadn't realized it at the time, or rather she hadn't realized the significance of it at the time. She'd remembered thinking it was singularly odd that one of the groom's men should be a woman, particularly that it should be Kyoya's favored patent lawyer that he used for business, the others whose names she had all heard of before the Hitachiin twins, the best man Tamaki Suo, Morinozuka, Haninozuka, did not seem to question the decision or even blink at her appearance in a man's dark suit. After the reception the seven of them could be found talking, each one congratulating Kyoya, and she remembered at the time wondering if she should be worried about the way his eyes lingered on Haruhi and even softened slightly as he looked at her face.

It was explained to her, later, that she was more a thing of convenience than an actual wife, "We've entered into a bargain, you and I, to share our funds and procreate and possibly find some semblance of happiness in each other's company. I recognize that I am not an easy man to live with, in all honesty as far as emotions are concerned it would be best if you and I had not gotten married in the first place, however it is never emotions that are at stake."

With words that implied more than they said he told her that she was free to have as many affairs as she wished so long as he would be allowed to do the same. It was a business agreement, but hardly anything more significant than that. She'd immediately suspected that there was some other woman and with that progression she immediately suspected this woman was none other than the lawyer at the wedding Haruhi Fujioka who was married to Tamaki Suo.

She was right but she was also in many ways wrong about that.

Only a little after they were married they went to have dinner at Tamaki's house. Tamaki was an old school friend of Kyoya's, as hard as that was to imagine, and from the way Kyoya spoke about him (the fondness, the smile) most likely his best friend. They had attended the same elite school, Ouran Academy, and had founded some sort of a club together there that had become quite infamous.

The man was different from Kyoya, she'd noticed it at the wedding as well, Kyoya was always cool and collected noting everything but Tamaki seemed to be bouncing off the walls at every moment running this way and that as if he were a child always with a grin on his face. He also flirted like the very devil, but there was a lightness to it, and whenever he commented on Kyoko's charming beauty he would turn to his own rather exasperated looking wife to pour his displays of affection on her.

She learned, then, that Haruhi had also gone to school with the pair of them and had in fact been a member of the club. She was quieter than Suo, more like Kyoya, but in a way she seemed to compliment him. She provided him direction for his spastic nature and when they looked at each other there was real love in their eyes.

Perhaps what was most surprising was the lack of significant glances between Kyoya and Haruhi, the lack of that lover's glance, the sign of a forbidden tryst. For Haruhi, when she addressed him, there was only very fond and stable friendship that had grown over the years however she looked at Kyoya it was not as a love interest. When she looked directly at him he would share this expression, it was only when she turned and the eyes were off him that his expression would become one of distant longing.

Tamaki and Haruhi, as it turned out, were visited many times a month by old academy friends not limited to Kyoya. All those faces she had seen at the wedding, standing behind Kyoya, made their way to Tamaki's house not simply for Tamaki but for Haruhi as well.

"You have to understand, Kyoko, it's not an affair in the traditional sense of the word. We each came, more or less, to an unspoken agreement when it came to Haruhi Fujioka. Only one of us, at the end of the day, could have her in a romantic context and if it could only be one then it had to be Tamaki our prince. However, losing her to Tamaki did not mean losing her completely, in this way Haruhi has five husbands rather than simply the one. Of course, neither she nor Tamaki realize this, it's in their nature to be oblivious to these things but it's true all the same."

And they really were, in spite of their own married status, their growing families it really was as if she was some sort of princess tied to them all. Together they were this force of nature, this impossible untouchable thing, that she could only stare at and wonder how they had come together so beautifully.

She had not expected love in marriage, she had not married for that purpose, but even so she wondered if Kyoya would ever look at her with even a glimmer of the emotion he looked at Haruhi with.

It didn't take long for her to take him up on his offer of having an open marriage. He was young, sweet, charming, and while not as accomplished or beautiful as Kyoya he was somehow more real than he had ever been. She had been briefly happy while it lasted, basking in the light of this normal mutual relationship, but it ended quickly enough. He demanded she leave her husband and she found herself forced to explain that leaving was not a part of the business agreement she and Kyoya had entered into.

"What if I want a divorce?" She'd once asked him as he was over his desk looking over contracts, figures, numbers and all those other things that drove his business.

He'd glanced up at her, his mind obviously still on the business in the way that it was always on the business, and said, "I suppose you can, I frankly would rather you didn't with the division of wealth that comes with divorce, but do try to remember that you will never find an opportunity like this again among the elite. It was matchmaking pure and simple that brought us together, after this, you will have to find yourself a lover among the more common folk."

So they didn't get divorced and then she got pregnant and she decided that loving her child would have to be enough.

He was a surprisingly doting father, still cold, still somewhat distant, but when he looked at their daughter it was similar to the way he looked at old school friends. Until she saw that soft smile at their daughter she hadn't realized that she had wanted him to be cold and negligent to satisfy her pettiness so that it wasn't just her alone in his casual disregard.

As it was her daughter never understood why she was unhappy, why she didn't like the fact that there were five unrelated uncles and one aunt, why she sometimes felt she just had to leave and get out and never look back.

It was like putting on a play, a show for the world around them, and knowing every single night that you were saying the same useless lines over and over and over again. She could never be an actor and yet here she was acting every single day.

She had her affairs every once in a while, short lived things that they were, and pretended to be more dramatic than she was more desperate as if Kyoya was truly a monster instead of something untouchable and distant. He never blinked at them, never asked who, never asked why and they let these things be.

It was a business arrangement, nothing more and nothing less.

**Author's Note: Or why marrying Kyoya would suck. Anyway thank you for reading feel free to leave reviews they are appreciated.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Ouran High School Host Club**


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